Teaching sales, marketing and customer service with humor and enthusiasm

Expectations: The Visitors and Yours

The great majority of us have expectations of people, places and experiences. Even if we are unaware of them, the expectations are tucked into our conscious or subconscious minds. I spend time thinking about the expectations of visitors to tasting rooms: what do they expect of the tasting, the winery itself, the tasting room staff and the experience as a whole. I’m often surprised when I send people mystery shopping and they’re disappointed that they didn’t get what they expected, instead of measuring the experience they did have against the benchmarks I have set.

Just as important, or even more so, is to think about your own expectations of the visitors to your tasting room. Are your expectations positive or negative? Do you expect that people will enjoy their visit? Do you expect that they will buy and join the wine club? Or do you expect that they will go home empty-handed? You can easily turn your expectations of visitors into reality by the way you treat them. If you assume they won’t buy, they probably won’t and it may be that you treat the visitors that you don’t think will buy slightly differently than those you think will make a purchase.

Be aware of how much your thoughts are guiding the interaction with visitors, and how much you are directing the visitors the way you think they will go.